Sunday, January 1, 2017

Week Ending 1 January 2017

After the hub-bub that is the lead-up to Christmas I always love the week between Christmas and New Year. Copious leftovers mean very little cooking is required, a temporary 'blindness' means we can skip most cleaning, and everyone is at home (well except Mr 19 who had to work most days, but thankfully some were short shifts) so we can relax together. There was lots of reading, game playing, and movie and tv watching.

Two of Miss 16's recent reads

We had fun pitting ourselves against quiz show contestants (Miss 16 was delighted when one question related to trampolining moves!), while the guys have also watched a lot of cricket. Mr 24 popped in a couple of times and we Skyped with Miss 22, who was a little disappointed not to get a white Christmas but had a great time regardless. She's based in London for a week or so, so we've been enjoying virtual day trips.

Royal Observatory, Greenwich

The Freud Museum, an essential visit for our psychology student!

When the weather cooperated - which wasn't as often as it should have given it is supposedly summer here - Miss 16 and I went out birding. One of our highlights was all the Welcome Swallow nests in one of the bird hides. It's amusing watching the parents fly in to feed the chicks. The nest looks empty, an adult arrives and instantly there is a lot of peeping and four wide open mouths pop up. Another highlight was the Pied stilt chicks. They were probably a similar age to the swallow chicks but running around feeding themselves, with their parents barely in sight. A good example of two very different breeding styles. When the weather didn't cooperate we enjoyed a little international birding - courtesy of a DVD set we received for Christmas. So far we've visited Canada and Britain. Next stop, China.

Miss 16 and I have been chatting about the year's homeschooling to come but still haven't made all our decisions. She was worried she hadn't been doing enough but I showed her her transcript so far, showed her some typical US requirements (since we don't really have any) and showed her some official school material for her age group. Hopefully she's reassured that she is more than on track both quantity and quality wise! That still doesn't solve our issue of what to do this year. English and Animal Behaviour are all sorted and there will be a Statistics course (exact shape and content still to be determined). We're agreed on the need for one more course (she's thinking two but given the difficulties we're having coming up with one....) , that it should probably be in the social sciences/humanities area and are thinking it should be mainstream/academically heavy since she already has a few quirky courses. But other than that we are totally clueless. I'm looking through MOOCs and video courses. She's enjoyed those in the past and if she's not inspired by the content then she might as well enjoy the instruction method. Hopefully inspiration strikes in the next week or two so I have time to sort all the details before her academic year starts in earnest.

Outwardly this wasn't a productive week but it was a great one for recharging our batteries for the year ahead.